Grey-haired men pestering children

The Greek political parties have started broadcasting their political ads and thought it might be interesting to translate some of them for (fun) you.

New Democracy (ruling party) has produced three videos so far. The first one is a desperate (in terms of acting, at least) attempt to show Antonis Samaras close to the younger generation (the majority of ND’s voters are above their 40s or even 50s).

The reference to the stadium is one more cheap attempt to attract votes of supporters of AEK Athens football club. They have been asking for a new stadium for more than a decade now and New Democracy is promising to make their dream too. I loved two details in this video.

The first one is that our PM indirectly admits that Greece, the country he has been governing for the past 2,5 years, is not a normal and serious country yet.

The second one is a symbolism. Greek youth faces unprecedented high unemployment and Samaras tells them “keep on training and we will keep on working”. I hope this was not some sort of subliminal message.

Their second video is even more ridiculous and desperate to use anything that happens in order to demonise SYRIZA. In this video New Democracy plays the security card in the same way it has adopted scare-mongering as its main strategy not only to win the 2012 elections (I can still remember them saying that we will be queuing for bread if SYRIZA won) but to control reactions and unrest during their administration. Samaras goes as far as using (again) the Charlie Hebdo story in order to stress his alignment with the “Fortress Europe” approach.

Their third video is an ode to individualism. A working man, insecure and alone, is having his thoughts about Greece.

He is scared he will lose his job if SYRIZA wins. This is how they want people to think. Just keep on xeroxing and shut the fuck up.

SYRIZA tried to play around with more positive words. Lots of crisis porn footage, the usual lock somewhere and a wind of change somewhere in between. Big nice words like dignity and justice that verify the vagueness of what they want to do.

Another video by SYRIZA is this.

It reminded me of an older ad produced by PASOK, the ailing coalition partner of New Democracy. Papandreou and Tsipras get prepared to address the crowd, they walk from the backstage to the main scene like Rocky Balboa was heading to face his opponents. Lots of former PASOK politicians have jumped to SYRIZA in the meantime and there are more and more people calling SYRIZA as the new PASOK. So this similarity looks even funnier now.

And last but not least, the video of Independent Greeks. I decided to translate it because it’s funny, despite the fact that the party might not manage to gain any seats at the Parliament after the elections. Their only hope is to reach the 3% threshold, gain 5-10 seats and be invited by SYRIZA to govern together.

As Greek satirical site Luben.tv put it “Why on earth do you keep showing us grey-haired men caressing children?”

8 responses to “Grey-haired men pestering children”

Reblogged this on A Gael in Greece and commented:
Have you been wondering about those election adverts put out by political parties in recent days? Thanks to Kostas Kallergis, you can now view them with English-language subtitles. Kostas also throws in his analysis of the message they are trying to convey.

I find the second Syriza commercial particularly interesting. I live in Canada, a hypothetically prosperous country and in Toronto, Canada’s biggest city. 1 in 5 children are hungry, 2 homeless people died on the streets in the last week, youth unemployment is about 20%, job prospects are dim, 2000 people got laid off (unemployed) at the end of December, new job growth is part time and in the service industry (read: McDonald’s, Walmart), unions are being “busted” left, right and centre; we have a conservative government that keeps preaching austerity (and we’ve been living austere for years); manufacturing businesses are closing, government services are being cut and our taxes run at 50%. We hear scandal after scandal about corrupt politicians and deals (κομπινες) behind closed doors.

Yet people think this is the promised land. Students from Greece and other EU countries come to the school where I teach and then are angry when their parents can’t find jobs here – or become dishwashers or office cleaners. The teenagers are angry, as they should be – they were uprooted from what they know to come to a new place where the conditions, in the end, are not much better. Their parents are angry because – well…. I don’t know why. I can only say, “what were you expecting?” And then we hear they go back home.

I don’t know how many Greek people living in Greece read this. Think very carefully at the next election. Don’t be misled by comparisons to Canada and the US (which was in worse shape than Canada). Instead, look to yourselves and your own ingenuity. And keep in mind one thing, regardless of who you vote for, YOU are the government. Instead of waiting for the government to “fix” things, start fixing them yourselves.

Sorry if this sounded like a rant, it’s not meant to be. But I see these ads and am fearful.

Kenneth,
I can’t speak for the US. I know, however, that they went through a much more difficult recession/slow down than we did in Canada. Partly because we have lots of natural resources that we sell and that artificially buoys our economy, partly because their banking structure was much different from our and they had serious issues with banks investing in themselves and other such nonsense. Canadian banking rules are much stricter and we don’t have private banks (per se).

Will there be job opportunities in the US? Probably, certainly with a population of 300 million, there will be more opportunities. They are just starting to come out of their economic slump – so he may arrive at the most opportune time.

As to the summer comment, everything is great on vacation! Who really looks at the realities of life? When I go to vacation in Greece, I think that everything is good there too.

Stay optimistic and let him be optimistic. He’ll need a change after the gloom and doom of Greece.

The reasons that have brought Greece, and indeed other countries into the dire straits that they now find themselves in are well documented, and sadly not without precedent. The way out of these difficulties however are complicated in a fairly novel manner by the one size fits all single currency, which prevents it
from taking the usual course of action in such situations. It would benefit Greece enormously at this point to revert back to the Drachma and devalue their currency. This would make exports competitive and imports expensive, which in the normal scheme of things should attract inward investment boosting industry and jobs, and begin the road back to recovery. Syriza’s promise to renegotiate the bail out is all very well, but any benefit from such a renegotiation is dependant upon the people to whom they owe money agreeing to Greece defaulting on that debt, and that is not by any means certain. The rhetoric from Germany suggests that the possibility of an exit from the single currency for Greece is not quite as unthinkable as it once was. Time will tell if there is any substance to this rhetoric. Personally I think a return to the drachma is the best solution for all concerned.